The Nose Isn't Right
by 10-phoenix-feathers
Summary: Flynn is pardoned, and Rapunzel wants to know why all of his old wanted posters have such strange noses. The tale of why Flynn's nose is always depicted differently - and completely wrong! Oneshot.


_Disclaimer:_ _Tangled and its characters and storylines are owned by Disney, and not by me.  
_

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Flynn – or Eugene, as Rapunzel likes to call him – sits next to Rapunzel in the courtyard of the palace, watching as soldiers pile up hundreds and hundreds of old wanted posters. Eugene had been officially pardoned a few months before, and the King and Queen have given orders to have all the posters brought in and burnt. This is no easy feat, but they are all at last in the courtyard, and the soldiers are preparing for a public bonfire that night, in which the people are to toast marshmallows and sing songs under the stars – and maybe send up a few lanterns, too.

But for now, Eugene is happy to just sit with Rapunzel, and watch as his old life is heaped up into large piles, ready to burn.

Rapunzel is examining a few of the posters, and suddenly bursts out laughing. "Eugene, have you seen this? Look at your nose, how on earth did they get it like that?"

Eugene glances over at the poster, and groans. "What did they do now." His nose is at least a foot long – in proportion to the drawing – and has a little snout at the end. Rapunzel is bent over in giggles, and Eugene snorts. "That's not the worst I've seen, trust me."

"Well, what is the worst you've seen? Is it this?" Rapunzel holds up a poster with a pig nose for Eugene, and bursts into giggles again.

Eugene sighs dramatically. "I don't know how they came up with this many ideas… I really don't."

"Who drew these, anyway!" Rapunzel gasps for breath in-between giggles.

Eugene looks into the distance, his eyes narrowing in rememberance. "That is a long story, one that we do not have time to tell."

Rapunzel slaps him playfully. "Stop being so dramatic and tell me!"

Eugene sighs. "Very well. This is the story of how my nose was drawn. Wrong."

/

"Flynn Rider. Notorious outlaw, wanted thief. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Flynn looked up at the soldier and shook his head. "I simply have to say that you have an extremely ugly haircut."

The soldier spluttered and composed himself with some difficulty. "Take him away," he said.

"Where?"

"To the mugshotter." The soldier smiled then, and Flynn couldn't help the small tinge of fear that entered his heart as he was led away.

He was led into a large room, painted white. On the furthest wall was a line of desks, and several people sat with their backs to him, scribbling away furiously at pieces of paper. In the middle of the ceiling was a crystal chandelier, sending beads of light to the white floor.

But Flynn only noticed this after he took in the man standing in the middle of the floor, hands on his hips, facing the back wall. One of the soldiers escorting Flynn coughed.

The man flew up his bejewelled hand in a stop sign. "Zank you, zank you, I know you are here."

"Yes sir. Umm… What do you –"

"Zank you, I haph no need of your hilp. I haph my apprentices, useless zo zey are." And with that, the man turned – with a twirl of his hands – and bowed to the soldiers, though Flynn always liked to think that he was bowing to him. He had a little dark moustache, and white blond hair. His clothing was bright and flamboyant and he twirled his fingers as he said, "I am ze great Mug ze Shot."

"Mug ze Shot?" tried Flynn.

"Zat is wight. Mug ze Shot. And you are… eh, eh, eh, who are you?"

"This is Flynn Rider, and he needs a mugshot," said one of the soldiers.

"Wella, off you go," said Mug ze Shot, waving his hands. The soldiers were a tad hesitant to leave, but after Mug ze Shot told them that they could wait outside, and let them attach Flynn's rather heavy shackles to the waiting hooks on the floor, they finally left.

Flynn was left tied to the floor, with the strange Mug ze Shot looking him over with his arms folded, muttering away to himself. "Umm… So, what's going to happen now?" asked Flynn, his fears evaporated as he tried not to laugh at the artist.

"Hush!" Mug ze Shot put a finger to his lips and hissed at Flynn. "You must be quiet. I am just uh… just uh… how vould you zay it now?"

From the back of the room, one of the apprentices said, "He's just examining your face."

"Ahh yes, ze face!" Mug ze Shot clapped his hands and the apprentices all stood up, turned around, and assembled themselves around Flynn. The ringed hands were clapped again, and the apprentices started peering at Flynn's face, nose to nose, examining his eyeballs. "Ze apprentices are a new zing for zis country," explained Mug, waving his hands extravagantly. "Ze king himself wished me to take on zese people… useless as zey are… and teach zem how to dwaw cowectly." Mug pointed an ornamented finger centimetres away from Flynn's nose. "You are an expewiment. I apologise if the results are less zan sat… sati… vat am I zaying?"

"Satisfactory," supplied an apprentice.

"Exactly! Back to vork!" Mug clapped his hands again. The eight apprentices scrambled back to their desks and started drawing furiously. Mug shook his head at their backs. "Zey are not very clever," he said confidingly. "I vould not keep zem if I had a choice. You are ze first zey dwawed."

"I won't look forward to the results then," said Flynn, privately baffled.

Mug shook his head. "No, no, I vould not keep my hopes up. Zey are… how vould you zay it?"

"Completely useless," said the apprentices.

Flynn raised his eyebrows, and noticed that the chandelier was but two metres off the floor. Interesting… "You zee," said Mug, shaking his head, "Zey are really quite useless." He turned, and yelled, "You should be done now! Huwwy up!"

The apprentices scribbled even more furiously than before, if that was possible.

"Where are you from, anyway?" said Flynn. "You're not from around here."

"Zertainly not," said Mug in horror. "I vould never be caught being from zis country. In my country, zere are no useless apprentices dwawing useless dwawings."

"Of course not."

"Of course not! Vat did zey zay you vere here for again?"

"Is that knowledge really necessary in being the court artist?"

"Ahh!" cried Mug. "Ahh, you are vrong! I am not ze court artist. I vas, but zen I fell. I fell from fame in zadness… but never you mind. Now I am stuck here with zese useless apprentices. Vell, if I can just talk to you," and here he put his hand near Flynn's ear, "Zome of zem are actually quite good, but I cannot tell zem zat. Zey vould be vain." He turned, and yelled, "Oi, apprentices, are you done yet? You zould be done!"

The eight apprentices stood up, and Mug ze Shot strode over to them, and held out his hands for their drawings. He looked through them, tutting and muttering. "Zome of zese are actually quite good," he said. "Very well. You haph done well."

"Can I see them?" said Flynn.

"Ov course, you get to pick vich one is yours," said Mug. He walked over to Flynn and held up one of the posters with a flourish. "Vat about zis one?"

Flynn gave a small gasp of horror. The apprentice had managed to turn his beautiful, perfect nose into a crooked line. "What happened to my nose?" he cried.

Mug looked at it with a frown. "I suppose zis is a _leetle_ crooked," he said. "Very well."

"It's not!" yelled the apprentice who had drawn the picture.

"You… are useless," said Mug. "Zis nose, it is crooked."

The apprentice screwed up his face and ran out of the room.

Mug turned with a frown to Flynn. "Zis is… zis is not okay, he vas my best apprentice!"

"Maybe you shouldn't have told him that he was useless then."

"Humph," was all Mug would say, before snatching another drawing. "How about… zis one?"

He held up a hideous rendition of Flynn. His eyes and cheeks and mouth and forehead were okay, I suppose, but the nose… Flynn folded his arms and shook his head. "I cannot have a poster of me with a duck bill put up all through the forest. Sorry."

"Nonsense!" cried Mug ze Shot. "Zis vill only be put in ze records. You vill be long executed by zen." He gave a little laugh. "Come now. Zis is a brilliant drawing!"

Flynn stuck his nose in the air. "Sorry, can't do it. It's terrible."

There was a crash as the apprentice who had drawn the picture threw his pencil on the ground. "That's mean!" he yelled. "It's not terrible!"

"Sorry," said Flynn, "Just telling you the plain, hard truth. That is not my nose."

The apprentice ran sobbing from the room.

Mug ze Shot turned angrily. "Zat is not okay, you are taking avay all my apprentices!" Flynn shook his head, and Mug sighed and held up a picture of Flynn with a snout. "How about zis one?"

And so it continued. None of the pictures matched Flynn's nose, and he was privately horrified by how terrible their drawing skills were. They couldn't even manage a nose? Terrible!

At last there was only one apprentice left, standing nervously next to Mug, clutching his drawing. Mug ze Shot was seething by now, and he practically snatched the drawing away from the apprentice. "If you do not like zis one," he said, dangerously low, "I swear zat I vill thwow in ze towel."

Flynn frowned at the picture. It was better than the rest, that was for sure, but the nose… it stuck out of his face like a yellow umbrella in a crowd of red parasols. He said so, and the apprentice was rather offended – so much so that he ran from the room, yelling, "I quit!"

And Mug ze Shot was not happy. "How could you!" he yelled at Flynn's face.

Flynn just shrugged. "It wasn't good enough. I wouldn't be happy having that spread all the way through the forest. And if it doesn't pass the Forest Test, well, then, it's really not that good."

"I can't believe… I can't believe zat you vould do somezing like zis. I am hurt. You haph stabbed me." Mug ze Shot burst into tears.

Flynn patted the artist on the back. "There there, I'm sure you'll get your lucky break one day."

At this point, the two soldiers – who had been rather curious at the sobbing apprentices who had kept leaving the studio – entered the room. "What on earth is going on?"

Mug ze Shot straightened up and pointed at them. "Vy did you not stop zem?"

"Who?"

"My apprentices! Zey left me, left me to ze king's anger! You! Zis is all your fault!"

The artist straightened up, gathering all his energy, and then charged at the soldiers. The soldiers, who had not been expecting the mugshotter to attack them, dropped their weapons and ran for their lives, with Mug ze Shot chasing them from the room.

Leaving Flynn Rider, notorious outlaw, thief, and wanted criminal, by himself with weapons at his feet and a chandelier at his head. _This day just got a whole lot weirder_ , he thought, before picking the lock and climbing up to the chandelier.

When the soldiers came back, they had no idea where he was. Until he jumped down, landing on their heads, that is. From there all it took was a simple matter of hijacking the royal carriage and sprinting up and down twenty three flights of stairs before he was out of the palace, back in the forest, and _free_.

Later that day, the chief guard was looking through the eight drawings in despair. Every single one looked like Rider, but each had a different nose – how was he to know which was which? The soldiers who had escorted Rider had been demoted to toilet cleaners (and there was no chance that he was going to go down and ask them; being seen with them would just be _too_ embarrassing.). Mug ze Shot had quit/been fired moments after the incident, and as for him, he had a terrible memory for faces, especially noses.

But which was the right one?

In the end, the chief of the Palace guards just decided to get copies of all eight pictures. That Rider deserved it, after all. After all the trouble they had caused him – and now the palace would need a new mugshotter!

/

"The End," says Eugene, and Rapunzel laughs and leans into him.

"That's a wonderful story," she says, "If only I actually believed it."

"Oh, it's true," says Eugene. "And why ever wouldn't you believe me?"

"I don't know, just seems a little tall for my taste."

"You never believe my stories," pouts Eugene.

Rapunzel only smiles. "Maybe I will, just this once," she says, smiling up at him.

And Eugene knows then – knows in his heart – that Rapunzel doesn't mind if they get his nose wrong, and he shouldn't either, because it doesn't matter. Because pictures aren't real. He is Eugene, without the pictures or with them, and they can't change a thing. His nose is perfect, but Rapunzel is even more so.

(Well, maybe it does matter to him, just a bit. And that night, when the pictures are burned, he can't help but feel a bit of anger leave him in the smoke that drifts up into the sky. Finally, his nose has a clear record, and can be left to fend for itself without all those troublesome rumours that say that 'Flynn Rider has a nose like a pig!')

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 _I hope you enjoyed that random plot bunny that came to me in the middle of the night. I don't know if it made sense. I'm sorry if it didn't, but it was heaps of fun to write. I hope you enjoyed it! Would love any thoughts in a review... *hint hint* ... :)_


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